


Nomads

by peachsicle



Category: Game Grumps, markiplier - Fandom
Genre: Character Death, F/M, Graphic Description, Implied Cheating, Multi, Unrequited Love, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-22
Updated: 2016-07-22
Packaged: 2018-07-26 03:00:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7557490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peachsicle/pseuds/peachsicle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the midst of the apocalypse, staying together is the only way to survive. But who can be trusted, and who simply wants to watch the New World burn at their feet?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nomads

**Author's Note:**

> A Zombie Apocalypse AU surrounding Mark and Suzy is something I haven't wanted to do since I first got into Game Grumps tbqh, and I was unwilling to let this idea go. I don't really have a clear plan for the story yet, which is why towards the end of the chapter it gets a little broken up and jagged in writing, but hey I'm trying. This chapter also contains a major spoiler and character death for a later chapter so beware!

“Go!” The words come out harsh and hurried as he lurches her forward, eyes wide with panic. Suzy stumbles over herself, still staring off in horror at the mass bodies swarming around the still screaming male, his arm outstretched towards the fleeing survivors. She’s almost limp in disbelief, watching as he’s mauled by the things once considered to be human, both his pleas for help, as well as the others yelling around her muted and replaced with ringing in her ears. 

“Ross,” she whimpers, and for a split second, Suzy breaks out of both Mark and Arin’s control, her feet propelling her back towards her fallen friend, back into the heart of the horde. She knows in the back of her mind that nothing she does can help; even if he survived the onslaught of Infected, soon enough he’d become one of them, too, but leaving him behind wasn’t something she could do, wasn’t something she could even fathom doing. “ROSS!” 

She doesn’t get far before an arm has wrapped around her waist, while a hand grabs quickly at her arm. She fights them both, desperately, unwilling to let the Australian go down like this. Listening to his pained pleading is physically unbearably, and she feels sick as he’s torn apart. It’s Mark, though, that breaks through Ross’s screaming, his body shielding Suzy from the massacre as he grabs her face and forces her to look at him. Behind chipped glasses, pain fills his deep brown eyes, and his voice trembles. 

“Suzy, go!”

\--

Two Months Earlier

“Stay down,” Arin warns as hushed as he can manage, peering through the small slit in the boarded up windows. There aren’t many out there now, with the car alarm two streets over drawing a mass of them out of their area, but there’s more than enough to be concerning. Still, if they wanted to dare it, the two of them together might be able to handle it. Arin keeps that to himself, though, unwilling to risk neither his nor her life. Instead, he sighs, and sinks down beside Suzy, head rested against the wall. He wants to rest his eyes for just a moment, while they have a small reprieve from the chaos.

“You should sleep.” She mutters, not looking up from where she’s cleaning her gun. He chuckles before letting his head swivel to glance at her. No doubt he’s exhausted, but unlike her, when he does manage to crash, he’s down for the count. She tosses and turns on good days, restless even when she cannot physically move due to exhaustion. On bad days, she wakes up screaming minutes after passing out. At this point, the dark circles under her eyes are likely a permanent feature. After a moment of silence, Suzy looks at him quizzically. “Really, you should. While it’s still quiet.”

He almost argues with her, telling her that she should be the one to sleep – especially with a lapse of Infected in their area, if she did wake up screaming, they’d likely be okay. But he doesn’t say any of this. In fact, he doesn’t say anything in protest, and instead shifts until he’s lying down beside her. 

“Don’t let me sleep all night, Suze; wake me up at Sunset.”

It takes, at most, two minutes before Arin is snoring softly, and Suzy sighs softly to herself. There aren’t many of them outside, but the groaning and growls still manage to penetrate their silent sanctuary. It doesn’t scare Suzy much, anymore; after three months, it’s become almost like white noise, and if she wasn’t any the wiser, she might’ve thought of letting herself fall asleep, but even with the exhaustion bone-deep, she’s wired and restless, and couldn’t think of sleeping even if she was dead. She’d never tell Arin, but more than once she had considered it, simply turning the gun on herself, ending it on her own terms instead of becoming one of those things. Whether anyone wanted to admit it or not, Suzy didn’t lie to herself; there was no coming back from this, with only 10% of the population of the States estimated as still alive (as of two weeks ago, before the radio broadcasts went out), there was no recouping. 

Not that she was planning to give up, though; she couldn’t, for Arin’s sake. At least, that’s what she tells herself as her attention turns to him, watching as he sleeps soundly, despite the chaos just on the other side of the wall. Lightly, she brushes a strand of hair from his face, and he shifts closer to her instinctively. He loves her, it’s a secret to no one – even before the outbreak, those around them saw his love for her, and she loved him, too, but it would never be quite the way he wanted. Still, like this, she could at least pretend she loved him the way he wanted her to, the way she wanted to. Shifting, she positions herself next to him on the ground, and curled at his side, Suzy could lead herself to believe that this was normal, that this is how she wanted to be. She could almost believe that everything was okay, that they were happy in a home of their own, and not in constant danger, fearing for their lives. Closing her eyes for just a moment, she lets herself picture it, and just for a moment, she’s content.

Screaming (for once not her own) and rapid gunfire startle Suzy and Arin into consciousness, the former scrambling for her gun, and the other scrambling to his feet and to the boarded window. An unnatural red light has bathed the inside walls with eerie vibrance, streaming in from the cracks in the boards from the outside. Squinting, Arin makes out two figures, one – a man – who is holding a flare in one hand, and his side in the other. The second body – a woman, judging by her screaming – is firing erratically into the night, while the man yells at her to stop and calm down. At this rate, it was only a matter of time before she attracted a larger gathering of them; every Infected within a mile radius was likely on their way because of her recklessness.

“She’s going to get us killed,” Arin whispers harshly under his breath. “Doesn’t she know how to fucking shoot?” 

Outside the safety of their walls, the man turns to his companion, most of his energy being spent on clutching his still-bleeding side. She’s too reckless with the gun, even after accidentally shooting him, she has no control. Staggering, he moves closer to her, shouting instructions that go mostly unheard as he attempts to reach for the gun. In the chaos, she stumbles, turning the gun on him before she trips over herself completely. A final gunshot, before everything goes quiet, the only noises coming from the surrounding Biters. He stares, shell-shocked, at the lifeless body of his partner, fingers limp around the butt of the gun. He told her, so many times, not to keep her finger wrapped around the trigger, he told her. Around him, the world begins to spin; he’s lost too much blood, and he knows he’s in trouble.

Disposing of the flare, he reaches out for the gun, before everything shifts from under him, and he’s collapsed beside the dead body of the girl he tried to protect. This is how he’s going to die, he realizes suddenly; after all the fighting, after all he went through to survive, he’s going to die, because of the foolishness of someone he tried to save. From the corner of his eye, he realizes there are figures moving towards him, and it’s only a matter of seconds before he feels their hands on him, pulling at him, and dragging him. Perhaps it’s because he’s gone mostly numb that he doesn’t feel their bites, doesn’t feel the flesh being ripped from his skin, or perhaps it doesn’t hurt as bad as people had led him to believe. Even so, as he slowly starts to lose consciousness, as he starts to slip away from the world around him, the last thought to run through his mind is a simple, I don’t want to die.

“Get inside, now!” Arin whispers harshly, dragging the male’s body up the porch and into the foyer of their safe haven. He was lucky to get there when he had, with the Infected taking more interest in the woman’s dead body than that of the still breathing – if only barely – male she had been with. Suzy ducks back into the house, giving one last look out to the street to ensure the monsters were preoccupied, before shutting and locking the door. 

“Suze,” Arin calls from the other room. From the tone of his voice, she wonders if they were too late, if they would have to kill the stranger they went to great lengths to rescue. Solemnly, she follows after his voice, taking a moment to light a candle or two along the way to give them much needed light, before finally coming to join her companion on either side of the stranger. “He’s still breathing, but barely. I don’t know if he’s going to last the night.”

In the candlelight, Suzy takes a moment to look the stranger over. His forehead is beaded with sweat, face pale and sunken; if she didn’t know any better, she’d think he was dead. He certainly looked it.

“He’s running a fever,” She whispers, hand running slowly over his forehead. “Go get a wet towel,” Arin doesn’t hesitate before he’s left room, heading carefully upstairs. The gunshot wound hidden beneath bloodied cloth will take most of their supplies to patch up, and it’ll be a solid week or two before he’s able to move again – if he even survives the encounter, but she tries not to think about that. Gently, Suzy brushes a stray strand of dyed-red hair from his dampened forehead before her hand strokes at the heated skin of his face. She can’t bring herself to tear her eyes away from him, drinking in his features. 

“You’re going to be okay,” She whispers to his unconsciousness, thumb swiping slowly and lightly across the dark circles under his eye. “We’ll take care of you.”


End file.
